Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Retangling the Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy 1

In 1987, Robert Anton Wilson wrote
"The Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy" as an introduction to a work of
fiction on alien conspiracies. In his essay, Wilson advances the view
that conspiracies are ubiquitous and ever-present but at the same time
the idea of One Big Conspiracy is a complete myth.

Contending In The Night

Wilson
begins by clearly explaining the fact, now widely known, that the real
power in this world does not lie with governments but with the
international banks that provide them credit. He explains,

...governments cannot do anything—good or ill, wise or
foolish—unless the banks first lend them the money for the project. The
power is in the banks. The governments survive on the permission of the
banks. If the banks cut off their credit, governments die. Any
government that resists has its credit cut off and dies.

It
is obvious that this form of financial control involves conspiracy.
Bankers conspire to further their own interests and manipulate
governments with credit and debt to do so. This blog has covered this
process in depth in a previous post.

Wilson
makes it clear that conspiracies are nothing new. In fact, conspiracy
may be a major factor in evolution as a whole. Life itself is a
conspiracy.

Conspiracy is the first manifestation of intelligent life.

The
original organic molecules formed affinity groups and conspired to
exploit the resources of this planet. Working in small cells originally,
these DNA conquistadores quickly developed organizations of higher
complexity and spread a network of hungry, predatory Life over the
previously dead Earth. In less than 3,500,000,000 years this network has
expanded from the ocean beds to the very peaks on the Himalayas. No
square centimeter of Earth is uninfested.

RAW
is kidding around here to some extent, but it is evident that he did
seriously hold conspiracy to be a necessary factor of biology. This
view, though, leads him to conclusions that are unpopular to dogmatic
believers in One Big Conspiracy.

From this evolutionary perspective, every paranoid is partly right. The
major error of the paranoid appears to be his characteristic belief in
one jumbo Mega-Conspiracy that explains everything. This is impossible,
because it violates basic laws of primate psychology. Domesticated
primates like wild primates are mischievous, sly and have a keen sense
of humor: the double-cross is their most characteristic invention.

As
in every other level or niche of nature conspiracies are characterized
by diversity. The multiplicity of life choices and strategies of
competition and cooperation make any long-term conspiracy completely
unstable. Power relations are fluid in nature and the wielders of
political and economic power in human societies are certainly no
exception to this. The "double-cross" is everywhere evident.

George
Washington, who rose to power by conspiring against his king, said with
blunt honesty, "Nations have no permanent allies, only permanent
interests." This is why governments, corporations and other large-scale
conspiracies all have a natural life-span, like other living systems.
There is no government on this planet that has existed in its present
form for more than 200 years; aside from the Dutch East India
Company, most corporations rise and fall within 100 years (average).
Outside of paranoid fantasy and Romantic fiction, most conspiracies
collapse of their own"internal contradictions"within months or years.

It
is as big a mistake, then, to claim that there no conspiracy as it is
to assert that One Big Conspiracy controls everything. As Carl Oglesby
puts it in The Yankee and Cowboy War,

...
a multitude of conspiracies contend in the night.... Conspiracy is the
normal continuation of normal politics by normal means . . . and where
there is no limit to power, there is no limit to conspiracy.

The
spaghetti theory brings us to a sort of shifting Middle Way position on
conspiracies. It is opposed to the random, nihilist view of the daily
headlines and the Official Story that there are no conspiracies, but it
is equally against the absolutist assertion that One Evil Cabal controls
the entirety of reality. Both the nihilist and absolutist extremes are
too simplistic. It is much more accurate to take the kaleidoscopic view.
Reality is complex and shifting, and mutating, evolving conspiracies
exist at every level, sometimes cooperating and sometimes in deadly
competition.

Like spaghetti on a plate, there are
many strands and layers of conspiracies all twisted together in a single
mass. Some strands are connected and some are fractured, but it is very
difficult to tell where one ends and another begins. In fact, it is
more like a nest of copulating but cannibalistic snakes writhing,
slithering, humping and devouring each other in constant upheaval.
Certain serpents may appear dominant at times, rising to the top of the
nest, but this is but a temporary illusion. All remain subject to the
diversity and complexity of nature.

Nucleus

In his classic 1956 study on the US ruling class, The Power Elite, sociologist
C. Wright Mills earlier reached the same conclusions as Wilson. While
the elites of the US military, corporations and major political parties
are entirely interwoven and incestuous it would be an analytical error
to assert that they constitute a unified conspiracy.

The conception of the power elite and of its unity rests
upon the corresponding developments and the coincidence of interests
among economic, political, and military organizations. It also rests
upon the similarity of origin and outlook, and the social and personal
intermingling of the top circles from each of these dominant
hierarchies.

This conjunction of institutional and psychological forces,
in turn, is revealed by the heavy personnel traffic within and between
the big three institutional orders, as well as by the rise of
go-betweens as in the high-level lobbying. The conception of the power
elite, accordingly, does not rest upon the assumption that American
history since the origins of World War II must be understood as a secret
plot, or as a great and co-ordinated conspiracy of the members of this
elite. The conception rests upon quite impersonal grounds.

With
this, however, Mills does not fall into the nihilist camp. Of course,
elite conspiracies happen. They happen all of the time. But this does
mean that one shadowy group effectively manipulates and directs all of
history. Mills is firmly in the middle way, spaghetti faction of
conspiracy analysis.

There is, however, little doubt that the American power elite — which
contains, we are told, some of ‘the greatest organizers in the world’ —
has also planned and has plotted. The rise of the elite, as we have
already made clear, was not and could not have been caused by a plot;
and the tenability of the conception does not rest upon the existence of
any secret or any publicly known organization. But, once the
conjunction of structural trend and of the personal will to utilize it
gave rise to the power elite, then plans and programs did occur to its
members and indeed it is not possible to interpret many events and
official policies of the fifth epoch without reference to the power
elite. ‘There is a great difference,’ Richard Hofstadter has remarked,
‘between locating conspiracies in history and saying that history is, in
effect, a conspiracy ...’

In Superclass -- The Global Power Elite And The World They Are Making, published in 2008, author David Rothkopf takes Mills's analysis to an international level. There is
a power elite but now they are global. Rothkopf argues that there are
about six to seven thousand cosmopolitan, elite individuals,
intermingled and incestuous in the same way that Mills describes, who
effectively call the shots in the world today. As in Mills's study these
elites are star players in government, high finance, military, the
entertainment industry, etc., but with the financial players at the head
of the pack. They are the type of people who private jet into summits
like the World Economic Forum in Davos and the yearly Bilderberg
meetings.

This superclass is also called "the
transnational capitalist class" in post-Marxist analysis, and "the 1%"
by the Occupy movement. In truth, they consist of far, far fewer than
one percent of the human population. They represent a fraction of
fraction of a fraction of a percent.

Nowadays, it a
common for even middle-class individuals, because of the Internet, easy
mobility, intercultural sophistication, etc., to consider themselves
"citizens of the world." How inconceivably more do these elites
transcend national boundaries. How does lunch in Hawaii, dinner in Rome
and an all-night trance party in Gokarna sound? The whole world is their
playground and ashtray. Governments are their wind-up toys.

A 2011 Swiss study
conclusively maps out the organizational structure that most of these
elites operate within. Suitably titled, "The Network of Global Corporate
Control," the paper explains that current corporate capitalism is a
hydra-headed behemoth with a dense nucleus controlled by only 147
corporations, mutually owned and invested in by each other. This
"super-entity" is in turn mostly made up of banks and other financial
institutions.

The most high-performing and/or
influential members of the super-entity is the superclass. Skimming
through the "company overview" pages of Businessweek's website brings
this all to light. Here we can look up US cabinet ministers who sit on
the boards of Fortune 500 companies, are rectors of ivy league
universities, are the chair persons of NGOs, etc. The whole rotten bowl
of spaghetti is laid out right in front of us. These are the Masters of
the Universe. Our freedom comes when their rule ends.

As
Mills emphasized over and over, though, these people very rarely
engage in what could be called specific conspiracies. Of course sinister
plots happen quite often, but what is more significant, more valuable
in terms of analysis, is the simple fact that these relatively few
individuals are in constant communication.

They are
peers in the broadest sense of the word. This has not changed from
Mills's time to our own. These elites may not be in agreement about most
things, but they are in lockstep consensus when it comes to protecting
their own class interests. If this is conspiracy then it is fluid and
continuous.

Metaparanoid

The global power elite, centred around
financial interests, is indeed a network. As a network its flexibility
is its strength. A network, though, also has a great weakness. It
depends on trust. It is dependent on more or less reliable information
between its nodes. If it doesn't have this, as in the "credit crunch" of
2008, it seizes up. It ceases to function effectively. This is
precisely where the meta-monkeywrenchers sneak in to pour sand into the
gas tank of the global corporate machine. Enter WikiLeaks.

Everyone
is aware of WikiLeaks. We think of it as a pesky but plucky little
organization that publishes documents, provided by whistle blowers like
Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, containing embarrassing details that
governments and corporations would very much not like the general
public to know about.

If WikiLeaks was only this, assuming its sincerity, this would itself be a necessary and heroic service for the 99+%, but essays
surfacing in 2010 and written by WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange,
show the organization to have vastly more profound and radical
objectives in mind.

Assange's key essay, "State and Terrorist Conspiracies," is broken down very nicely on the Zunguzungu
blog. In this essay Assange explains that elite rule is protected and
sustained through the authoritarian instruments of the state. The most
successful authoritarian states keep these repressive instruments hidden
as much as possible.

Authoritarian
regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the
individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization.
Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce
resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian
powers. This is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.

Effective
resistance must be prevented at all costs and the best way to ensure
this is to keep the public in the dark. The societies with the least
resistance are those who do not have any idea that they are being
oppressed. This is the optimal condition for the ruling class, both
nationally and globally.

As Assange and Zunguzungu go
on to explain, though, the more that an authoritarian organization keeps
its operations secret, the more its communications are closed. As
Zunguzungu interprets Assange:

And
his underlying insight is simple and, I think, compelling: while an
organization structured by direct and open lines of communication will
be much more vulnerable to outside penetration, the more opaque it
becomes to itself (as a defense against the outside gaze), the less able
it will be to “think” as a system, to communicate with itself. The more
conspiratorial it becomes, in a certain sense, the less effective it
will be as a conspiracy. The more closed the network is to outside
intrusion, the less able it is to engage with that which is outside
itself (true hacker theorizing).

An
inescapable paradox is identified and pounced upon. As an institution
increasingly tries to keep secrets it increasingly becomes less able to
trust its own internal communications. It no longer knows if it is
getting the full picture. It gets a classic case of paranoia. "Leaking"
only accelerates this process. The more leaks that are discovered, the
more communication has to be clamped down upon, and the less that can be
definitively known.

He
[Assange] decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this
kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the
conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective.
Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as
a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would
be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more.
Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s
information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy
will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its
own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive
function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so
paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire.

This is the real point of all of the major leaks we've witnessed in
recent years. The "Iraq War Logs," the U.S. State Department Diplomatic
"cables," etc. all assist in creating an atmosphere of mistrust within
the affected institutions. Edward Snowden's leaks on the vast NSA spy
apparatus have the same effect. More than just making people aware of
how their privacy is being constantly and minutely invaded it causes
massive systemic mistrust.

All in all, diplomats are
afraid to talk to other diplomats, spies are afraid to talk to other
spies, governments are afraid to talk to other governments. No one knows
what is going to get leaked, who is listening to whom, who is being set
up for what. And so things begin to get even more cryptic to the point
of total opacity, confusion, breakdown and silence. Or at least that's
Assange's theory.

Platinum Blonde

But who is Assange anyway? Could it
be, as many suggest, that both he and his organization are themselves
conduits of disinformation and subversive tools of Empire? Why hasn't
WikiLeaks, the argument goes, published any information about the 9/11
conspiracy? Why is Assange so dismissive of inquiries into 9/11? Is
Julian Assange himself an intelligence agent?

Conspiracy
theorists point to several things to support this claim. They are
suspicious of the fact that Assange has been publicly dismissive of
conspiracy research. They claim that the leaks that Assange and Co. have
released have never really harmed Israel in particular. And they have
special doubts about Assange's background.

Assange
formed a hacking group called the International Subversives and was
arrested in 1991 for a hack on the Nortel corporation. Assange's
sentence was reduced and it was later revealed that Assange subsequently
cooperated with Australian authorities in the Victoria Police Child
Exploitation Unit. Conspiracy theorists suspect that Assange has never
stopped being a police asset.

There is possible
evidence, though, that Assange has been used and abused by the powers
that be long before 1991. Theorists highlight the involvement of
Assange's mother and her former boyfriend with the San­ti­nike­tan Park Asso­ci­a­tion, an Australian New Age cult also called the Family or the Great White Brotherhood. This group, led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, reportedly

con­di­tioned
chil­dren with drugs, sen­sory depri­va­tion, sleep depri­va­tion,
torture and rit­ual sexual abuse in order to pro­duce sub­jects who bent
to the will of the group’s leader.

According to this theory, Assange at an early
age was subjected to a wide array of MK Ultra-style mind control
techniques and is even now an active Manchurian Candidate, however
conscious he may be of this fact. Conspiracy theorists point to
Assange's monotone voice and even his platinum colored hair, syncing
with Hamilton-Byrne's preference for "Aryan" looking children, to
support these claims.

Assange himself, in an interview with the New Yorker, has only spoken of being "on the run" from his mother's ex-boyfriend whom he suspected was a member of the cult:

Assange
recalled her [his mother] saying, “Now we need to disappear,” and he
lived on the run with her from the age of eleven to sixteen. When I
asked him about the experience, he told me that there was evidence that
the man belonged to a powerful cult called the Family—its motto was
“Unseen, Unknown, and Unheard.” Some members were doctors who persuaded
mothers to give up their newborn children to the cult’s leader, Anne
Hamilton-Byrne. The cult had moles in government, Assange suspected, who
provided the musician with leads on Claire’s whereabouts.

Whatever
the real extent of Assange's connection to this cult it is sufficient,
in the minds of many conspiracy theorists, to cast a dark shadow of
suspicion on the entire WikiLeaks project. Surely, they argue, it is
nothing but an advanced disinformation campaign.

Bumstead's Word

And
disinformation, for the elite conspirators, is the name of the game.
Provide just enough truth to make a story plausible and then tweak the
facts so that anybody who looks into it is led astray. On this subject
Ex-CIA director William Casey, in a quote that widely circulates the
net, stated the objective of the Agency very explicitly back in 1981:

We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the US public believes is false.

This is a pretty terrifying statement and one wonders, observing both mainstream and "alternative" media, if the program has been completed. The only problem is that there is no real evidence
that Casey ever said these words. Is the statement itself
disinformation? Is it designed and disseminated in order to project
a false image of CIA omniscience? How would it be possible to know one
way or the other?

It is easy to imagine, though,
that something like this program is in effect. Certainly it would be in
the interest of an intelligence organization to keep the public
disinformed. If so, however, how could the CIA protect its own agents
from being disinformed? Presumably they would be provided with the real information. But how would they be sure that this information was real?

If,
as we are led to believe, there are competing national intelligence
organizations then wouldn't they all be trying to disinform each other?
Wouldn't similar agencies in Russia, China, Israel, etc. be likewise attempting to totally disinform? And isn't this really just another
facet of Assange's own theory?

Even if Assange,
unwittingly or not, is an agent of disinformation his theory still
stands to reason. The more closed and paranoid an organization is, and
the more unsure it is of receiving real information and protecting its
secrets, the less effective it will be in dealing with real world
problems. This seems axiomatic and it reveals and even greater
meta-level to the spaghetti theory of conspiracy. No one can be entirely
certain of anything that is presented as being real.

Robert Anton Wilson wrote of another aspect of this conundrum which he called the SNAFU Principle:

It’s what I call the “snafu principle.” Communication only occurs between equals–real communication, that is–because when you are dealing with people above you in a hierarchy, you learn not to tell them anything they don’t want to hear. If you tell them anything they don’t want to hear, the response is, “One more word Bumstead and I’ll fire you!” Or in the military, “One more word and you’re court-martialed.” It’s throughout the whole system.

So the higher up in the hierarchy you go, the more lies are being told to flatter those above them. So those at the top have no idea what is going on at all. Those at the bottom have to adjust to the rules made by those at the top who don’t know what’s going on. Those at the top can write rules about this, that and the other, while those at the bottom have got to adjust reality to fit the rules as much as they can.

The
SNAFU Principle is a problem primarily of misinformation, individuals
at the lower rungs of the hierarchy telling their superiors what they
think their bosses want to hear, instead of disinformation but even this
is not certain. How many workers willfully and maliciously tell lies to
their employers?

If we combine Wilson's SNAFU
Principle with Assange's theories and with the competing total
disinformation campaigns, which may not exist but very plausibly do, of
various intelligence agencies then the probability is very great that
less and less people have any idea of what is really going on.

These
kinds of conclusions are anathema to the believers in One Big
Conspiracy. An assertion that the elite controllers of the System are
basically as confused and mis/disinformed as the rest of us itself
smacks of the worst type of disinformation. It causes us, they argue, to
underestimate our rulers and it "muddies the water." It makes clear
analysis impossible and therefore, as designed, it preempts effective
resistance.

The Intentional Structure Of Turd

One Big Conspiracy theorists do not like
contradictions. Only one consistent theory should be able to
encompass all available facts. Details that do not conform to the
emerging picture of absolute domination are rejected as being a part of
the conspiracy, as being disinformation.

This is in
direct opposition to the structuralist analysis of people like Noam
Chomsky. Chomsky bases his criticism of the System on the available
records -- media reports, publicly accessible government and corporate
documents, eye witness accounts, historical texts, etc. These documents
tend to shed light on the structure of institutions instead of
the elite individuals who are manipulating and benefiting from these
structures from behind the scenes and off the record.

Other
serious thinkers like Peter Dale Scott take a different approach.
Scott, by no means a One Big Conspiracy believer, asserts that analysts
and critics must look into the deep politicsthat are always present behind and beyond what we find in the public record.

Chomsky,
and as an MIT professor dismissed as a "gatekeeper" by conspiracy
theorists, will not speculate on what really happened on 9/11, during
the Kennedy assassination, in the alleged CIA involvement in the drug
trade, etc. because there is not enough textual evidence, he asserts, to
support such speculation. Scott, in contrast, argues that of course
such a record is lacking or hidden but by inference and with deep and
informed research it is possible to discover the outlines of real
conspiracy.

The problem with Scott's method is that
speculation, if not rigorous and confined to strict limitations, is
potentially endless. This is what is happening in the conspiracy theory
milieu.

There seemed to be a time shortly after 9/11
when there were only two theories on what took place that day -- there
was the official story and there was the conspiracy theory. The
conspiracy theory, in brief, claimed that elements within the US
government or ruling class, using Al Qaeda as either their dupe or
scapegoat, purposely brought down the towers in New York and struck the
Pentagon in order expand military operations and production and to
implement a strict system of domestic surveillance.

9/11
Truthers are still pretty much in agreement with this broad theory, but
splits in the ranks revealed themselves very early in speculation about
just how these attacks were carried out, and exactly by who. Were the
planes remote controlled? Were there any planes at all? Were the towers
brought down in a controlled demolition using thermite-type explosives?
Were the towers vaporized by advanced, top secret scalar technology? Was
it the CIA that really carried out the attacks? Was it the Mossad? Was
it the Jesuits? The Freemasons? An even more sinister group?

As
time progressed and positions hardened, factions formed along these
lines. The "9/11 Truth Movement" became less like a movement and more
like a loose collection of warring sects and tendencies. Each now
accuses the other groupuscule as being an active promoter of
divisive disinformation. Once again the spaghetti theory entwines it
all.

Post-9/11,
conspiracy theories have proliferated about every possible issue but
always within this same pattern. It is not uncommon now to have
conspiracy theories presented on both sides. There are no more official
stories. There is no single alternative story. To expand on Oglesby: a
multitude of conspiracy theories contend in the night.

Some
"Truthers" accuse the CIA as being behind the recent coup against the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, others claim that it was a CIA-orchestrated
pseudo-revolution that put the Brotherhood into power in the first
place. Still others, perhaps paradoxically, argue that both of these
positions are correct. Many researchers are now convinced of the use of
"crisis actors" in heavily mediated events like the Sandy Hook shooting
and the Boston Bombing. Others ardently argue that the whole theory of
"crisis actors" is absurd and it is only promoted to make genuine
researchers look ridiculous by association.

From the
perspective of the conspiracy absolutists, however, this all makes
sense. Of course those in power would do everything possible to confuse,
waylay and disillusion sincere and spirited researchers. Disinformation
plops the proverbial "turd in the punchbowl"
and makes the entire scene seem pretty creepy. Instead of being
presented with a clear case of elite corruption and foul play, an
individual who has "woken up" will be sucked into a bewildering vortex
of competing theories and personalities. There is a big temptation to
roll over and go back to sleep.

There is really no doubt that such a strategy is taking place. Even if the disinformation
campaign of intelligence organizations is not as total as the above
quote by Casey suggests, it is in the best interest of those in power to
keep a potentially informed opposition splintered and muddled. Is the
absolutist position, therefore, correct? Are we being lied to literally
about everything? Do only those at the very apex of the hierarchy have
any idea what is truth?

Robert Anton Wilson certainly
argues otherwise. There is a glaring contradiction at the heart of
absolutist conspiracism. This can be illustrated in reference to the
work of Alan Watt, found mostly at the website Cutting Through The Matrix.

Animal Farm

Alan
Watt is arguably the most articulate and convincing proponent of the
One Big Conspiracy theory on the net. Unlike David Icke, for instance,
Watt does not insist that we are being ruled by shape-shifting reptilian
overlords. Instead he tracks the objectives of the conspiracy, which
consists of a bloodline of interbreeding elite families who have been
the true power brokers of all the empires of history, through the
writings of their own public intellectual representatives. These men
include Carroll Quigley, H.G. Wells, Charles Galton Darwin, Bertrand
Russell, etc.

Watt, like all absolutists, believes
that the elite conspiracy is behind every aspect of culture, every
detail in history. The aim is total political, economic, biological,
psychological and spiritual control of humanity.

Already,
though, these elites reign in near omnipotence. Every item, every
story, that appears in the media, including most of the internet, is
only there because it has been carefully crafted to further their
Agenda. While average individuals plan for the month or, at best, the
year ahead, our "betters" plan in the span of decades and centuries. The
secret technology that they employ against us is decades ahead of even
the most state of the art devices available for public consumption. They
truly are as gods.

Week after week, in radio
broadcasts and on his site, Watt is relentless and unwavering in his
message -- we most resemble domesticated animals on a factory farm. We
are bred ultimately for the slaughter. Any freedom that we imagine we
have is deeply illusory. The best that we can hope for at this dismal
moment is to keep ourselves informed of the extent and depth of the dark
force that is sworn to extinguish the last sparks of our liberty and
humanity. Through these recordings a future resistance may become
possible, but there is no sign of this at present.

I
first came across Alan Watt on the Sweet Liberty radio show back in 2005
or 2006. I became mesmerized. On Sweet Liberty, Watt would occasionally
mention
how the big "alternative" radio networks, most especially GCN and RBN,
were essentially CIA operations. It was weird for me, then, when Watt
began to host a show on RBN (which he has just recently given up) and
became a frequent guest on Alex Jones' (someone who Watt earlier decried
as being a disinformation agent) flagship show on GCN.

Why
would Alan Watt join RBN? And more significantly why would a
CIA-controlled radio network allow such a radical voice on their
airwaves?

There are a few possibilities here but each of these deeply challenges the absolutist conspiracy narrative:

1)
Watt sold out. For the sake of fame and a bit of cash he went over to
the dark side. This appears very unlikely. Watt's message has not
changed since he got his show on RBN and he has maintained his
independent voice. His fame and influence has certainly grown but I
seriously doubt he is getting rich off of this. He seems sincerely
convinced of the utter importance of his message and took any
opportunity to reach a wider audience.

2) Watt has
always been an agent. Watt began as a caller to obscure radio shows like
Sweet Liberty, slowly building up his street cred and expanding his
sphere of influence, and is now one the most respected voices in the
field. This to me is also highly doubtful. Once again, it is Watt's
sincerity which is most convincing. Unlike many others he does not
sensationalize and he is not pushing his own agenda. If he is an agent he's one of the best.

3)
Watt is an unwitting tool to spread the myth of elite omnipotence. This
is more probable. It could also be that Watt is fully aware that he is
being used in this way but has concluded that it is the only way to
reach a wider audience. In other words, he is using the system as it is
using him.

4) Watt is wrong in his analysis -- we are
not as controlled as he insists. Perhaps RBN and/or GCN are not
controlled by the CIA or other nefarious organizations. Perhaps they are
just what they claim to be.

The big problem with
number 4 is if such large radio networks are essentially free of
control, if Watt is wrong in this regard, then what else is outside of
control? Certainly the conspiracy could not be total if this the case.
If, on the other hand, numbers one, two or three are true, regardless of
Watt's actual role, then the conspiracy may also not be as all-powerful
as it lets on. Why would it need to promote a myth of omnipotence if it
was truly god-like? Does it, like the Wizard of Oz, conclude that its
power increases when the people believe it to be powerful?

Al Dente

The
case of Alan Watt is really the whole of the absolutist position in a
nutshell. The fact that conspiracy theorists exist either means that the
control system is not as absolute as they insist or that their message is also being used as a device of control, which would indicate in turn
that the system craves the omnipotence that it actually does not
possess. In both cases the absolutist analysis falls short.

The
nihilist position, that events are essentially random and coincidental,
also fails. Conspiracies, in plural, are a fact. The only question is
of their size and depth. What nihilists consider to be coincidences,
conspiracy theorists take as being meaningful and intentional. The
bigger the conspiracy is posited to be the more "coincidences" are
resolved. When faced with coincidences the absolutist will simply absorb
them into his theory. As coincidences are absorbed the conspiracy
theory by necessity expands, often to seemingly absurd lengths.

To
escape the endless complexity and groundlessness of the spaghetti
theory of conspiracy, the absolutist needs to include more and more
within his theory. The control system is viewed as being far beyond
governments, intelligence agencies, elite families and even secret
societies. The conspiracy moves beyond humanity, beyond this world,
beyond this dimension. As RAW noted parenthetically in his essay:

(Thus, if there actually is one big jumbo-conspiracy governing this
planet, it must be, as Donald Holmes wittily suggests in the following pages, of non-human origin.)

This is the most erudite and profound blog I ever encountered on the internet. Just want to drop by and thank you.

To the Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy, I would like to add my observation that each Sprachraum is a spaghetti on its own, with its own unique obsessions and unconnected to the other Sprachraum-spaghettis until someone comes up with the translation of a noodle thread here and there.

By the way, how should one contact you? I can be contacted via my website info.

Yes, languages themselves are linguistic conspiracies. What I mean moreover is that each people sharing the same language (Sprachraum) tend to have different themes they are obsessed about when it comes to conspiracies; one language-group may suspect or perceive X to be all-powerful whereas X is not even on the radar to another language-group. Browsing on the "alternative" bookshelf in a bookshop in New York, Tokyo and Beijing would be evident that there is not one big narrative running the world.

Yes! I think that takes us to a whole new dimension of the spaghetti plate. Comparative linguistic conspiracy theorizing. A hardcore conspiracy monger, though, would say that this is all part of the uber-plot. What better way to divide and conquer humanity than to have every linguistic and ethnic group believe that the real source of oppression emanates from entirely different elite sub-groups? Omnicultural disinformation.

The first RAW book I ever purchased was actually Donald Holmes book; I hadn't paid enough attention to notice that RAW only contributed the Introduction. About 1/2 way through the book I put the book down in disgust, unable to read further. Incest, Holocaust denial, aliens, etc. Way, way too much for me. And then I realized it wasn't RAW who had authored the book. I can't tell you how instrumental this little micro-cosmic giggle thoroughly changed the way I think, and just how great a foundation it laid down for my work in progress BS Detector.

The Holmes story does suck, but it dies reveal a certain hoop Chapel Perilous can send one through. In the process of doubt, there are times when the absurdities in Holmes novel are just as "true" as anyother, and that the act of writing those "truths" down in a book transforms them magically into sonething "dangerous". It is the conspiracy between Art and Ego, and my introduction to this twist via Holmes was quite an explicit education. I "learned" more from Holmes little book than any of RAW's, it's just that RAW does a better job of explsaining just exactly what it was that I "learned", how I "learned" it, and what to do about it. I remember I left my copy of that book in the hallways of Loyola University in hopes that someone would happen to actually read it and be effected as powerfully as I was.